Productivity Paradox Quotes

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time - so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?

Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

We spend more time working for our labor-saving machines than they do working for us.

We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.

I don't like making my job easier. How are you accomplishing anything if there's no struggle? If I have to create a struggle that doesn't exist, I'll do that. Time and money constraints are a great way to do it.

The lazy manage to keep up with the earth's rotation just as well as the industrious.

I think basically I'm lazy, but I have a housewife's mentality when I go about my job.

I have a strong work ethic, yet I'm incredibly lazy as well. The problem with being a writer is that everything you do can be called research. Sitting in the pub is research. Reading the newspaper can be research.

In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage.

You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs. Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

I love getting things done. That's why I spend several hours a day reading productivity articles. And when the day is done, I bookmark the ones I didn't get to for later. I learned that trick in a productivity article.

The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

I'm always wondering: Have all these time-saving devices actually saved us any time, or have they just created a million fetishes and obsessions that keep us from the quiet half hour we should be taking to sit and do nothing every day?

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.

The more one produces, the less one gets.

We think we're saving time with microwaves, cell phones, beepers, computers and voice mail, but often these things help us create the illusion of getting somewhere - and they foster a chain of constant activity. We're really just squeezing extra activity into every minute that we gain.